Zarah Voss's Arc

Chapter 5 of 16

Zarah waited at the waterline, armored and armed. She had built her suit for a thing that walked on two legs. She pictured it upright, tall, with a chest to strike. Now she watched the gray water and hoped she had guessed right. Sylvana stood back from the shore, flowers still folded tight. The water broke. What came out did not stand. It scuttled. A giant blue crab hauled itself onto the rocks, wide and low. Serrated leaf-tipped limbs dug at the stone. Its jaws were not a mouth but a flower, red and wet, ringed with green teeth like a hungry plant. Zarah's stomach dropped. Every plate on her chest faced up, meant to block a downward blow. The crab struck sideways. A claw slammed her ribs and threw her flat. The armor held, but it held wrong. It weighed her down and guarded nothing that mattered. "It's the wrong shape," she said, spitting grit. "All of it's wrong." "Then wear less of it," Sylvana called. Zarah rolled clear of the next claw. Her plan was dead. She needed a new one, now, on the ground. She grabbed the release clasps at her shoulders and tore the chest armor off. It clanged on the rocks. She kept only the plated gloves and the spiked boots. Lighter. Faster. She could move. The crab turned, tracking the taste of the pearls she carried. Its shell was thick everywhere she looked. But at each leg joint, the blue plating parted. Soft seams. She had built armor for a body's weak points her whole life. She knew where a shell had to bend. Zarah ran at it low. The flower-jaws snapped down where her head had been. She slid under the front claw and drove a boot spike into the nearest leg seam. The crab shrieked and lurched. One leg buckled. She rolled out and struck the next seam, then the next. Three legs failed. The crab tipped, dragging its own weight sideways. Its belly rose, pale and unarmored. Zarah saw the crack she needed. She jammed both plated fists together and brought them down on the exposed shell. It split. She hit it again. Green fluid gushed over her gloves. The claws went slack. The flower-jaws sagged open and stilled. Zarah sat down hard on the rocks, breathing in ragged pulls. Her fine armor lay scattered and useless behind her. The thing that had chased her pearls was dead. Sylvana came down the slope. Her flowers had opened again. "You kept the pearls." Zarah looked at the shell splitting open in the sun. Something clicked. The crab's plating had layers, thin and light, stacked to hold force without weight. "Look at that shell," she said. "That's how I stop my power cells from crushing each other in the pod. I've been building the wrong box for a year." She stood, gathered her pearls, and started back toward her workshop.